The government has appointed Kul Man Ghising as the new Executive Director of the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA).
The Cabinet meeting held on Monday made the appointment and Ghising is likely to assume office today itself after he receives his letter of appointment.
According to the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation, Ghising’s appointment letter arrived at the Ministry on Tuesday and he will most likely assume his responsibilities today.
Ghising, whose four-year term as NEA’s executive director ended on September 14, 2020, has been credited for ending Nepal’s chronic problem of power outage aka ‘load-shedding’ – which lasted for over 17 hours a day at some point — for good.
He also transformed the once-bankrupt NEA into a profit-making public utility within his four years in office as the chief executive of NEA.
Ghising had reduced the electricity leakage rate from 26 percent to 15 percent during his four-year tenure.
However, despite Ghising’s shining performance record and exceptional public pressure to keep him, the then KP Sharma Oli-led government had decided not to give Ghising a second term as the chief of the state-owned power utility.
Meanwhile, outgoing NEA Executive Director Hitendra Shakya has been transferred to the Water and Energy Commission with special facilities, a ministry source said.
There are several claims that the current NEA leadership has not been able to move ahead with many projects started during Ghising’s previous tenure.
On August 3, Minister for Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation Pampha Bhusal had requested Shakya to resign.
